Elizabeth King Keenan

Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Using Dynamic Systems Theory to Understand “Stress and Coping” and “Trauma and Resilience”

Although research is beginning to capture the complex interactions of biopsychosocial variables operating within experiences of stressors and trauma, the bodies of research have remained largely separate and limited. This study describes a scaffold of factors and pathways based on principles from dynamic systems theories (DST) to organize the literatures on stress and coping and trauma and resilience. As a process model, DST provides the language to understand both impact and response to stressors and trauma: not as a list of symptoms but as interactive processes within persons and between persons and their surroundings.

Using Foucault's “Disciplinary Power” and “Resistance” in Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy

Foucaults conceptualization of power relations provides a theoretical framework for cross-cultural psychotherapy reimbursed by a managed health insurance plan. Utilizing extensive case material from psychotherapy with a White therapist and an African American adolescent, the paper discusses how clinical social workers can operate within, but not be completely of dominant power structures. Applications are also made to supervision, education, and administration.

Being Known in Undergraduate Social Work Education: The Role of Instructors in Fostering Student Engagement and Motivation

Most undergraduate students pursue a social work major because of their desire to help others. Students tend to be more interested in doing than in understanding the research and knowledge of the profession and the complexities of social work practice. Instructors are often faced with the challenge of enhancing student motivation to learn challenging course material. This study explored student perceptions of instructor influences on their motivation and engagement in learning. Through online surveys, students described their experiences of being known and how those experiences affected their participation in practice, research, and human behavior in the social environment courses. Results showed that instructor caring (providing recognition, expressing relational qualities, and responding to students) positively influences student motivation and affective learning by increasing comfort, willingness to ask questions, take risks, and overall participation. Conversely, of those who reported mixed experiences or who felt unknown, most reported a negative impact on their motivation and participation. These findings suggest that social work faculty can influence student motivation and engagement with essential social work curriculum by expressing care and helping students feel known in the classroom.

From bumps in the road to the edge of chaos: The nature of change in adults

• Summary: This article explores the question of how human beings change, how change is constrained, and how change emerges out of and subsequently creates new forms of stability with adults. The emergence of Dynamic Systems Theories (DST) from developmental biology and neuroscience provide the tools to engage in such an understanding by attending to the issues of time, balance, influencing parameters (within person and sociocultural and material environments), and multiple adaptive and maladaptive pathways. DST provides the framework to understand the dynamic processes of bio-psychosocial factors that provide human beings with the stability and the flexibility to navigate the challenges and stressors of living. Complexity, the ability to experience inner continuity as one is changing, is a fluid balance that supports effective functioning.• Findings: Key principles and concepts of DST describe multiple pathways of stability and change. A case example illustrates how DST helps social workers understand cl...• Summary: This article explores the question of how human beings change, how change is constrained, and how change emerges out of and subsequently creates new forms of stability with adults. The emergence of Dynamic Systems Theories (DST) from developmental biology and neuroscience provide the tools to engage in such an understanding by attending to the issues of time, balance, influencing parameters (within person and sociocultural and material environments), and multiple adaptive and maladaptive pathways. DST provides the framework to understand the dynamic processes of bio-psychosocial factors that provide human beings with the stability and the flexibility to navigate the challenges and stressors of living. Complexity, the ability to experience inner continuity as one is changing, is a fluid balance that supports effective functioning. • Findings: Key principles and concepts of DST describe multiple pathways of stability and change. A case example illustrates how DST helps social workers understand client experiences and responses to stressors, formulate initial and ongoing assessments, and monitor clients’ participation in change activities. • Application: Social workers seek to help people who experience an imbalance due to an inability to effectively respond to the negative impact of a stressor. By understanding the various pathways of balance and imbalance along the continuum of continuity to change, social workers can better understand how stressors are impacting specific clients, and subsequently the kinds of change that would best assist each client.

Navigating the Ethical Terrain of Spiritually Focused Psychotherapy Goals: Multiple Worldviews, Affective Triggers, and Personal Practices

Constructing mutual, spiritually focused psychotherapy goals is a practice activity fraught with numerous ethical and countertransferential challenges. This article seeks to inform the thinking and enhance the ability of clinical social workers to engage in collaborative and responsive dialogues with their clients regarding the goals of spiritually focused clinical practice by (1) identifying the multiple value frameworks that influence decisions regarding practice goals, (2) articulating some of the ethical complexities and common countertransferential reactions associated with goal setting, and (3) providing self-reflection questions and guides to help therapists navigate the complexities of this material.

A New Perspective: The Common Factors Model as a Foundation for Social Work Practice Education

Foundation social work practice education is critical to the preparation of BSW practitioners for professional practice and the establishment of a theoretical and skill base upon which graduate students may build competencies in the advanced curriculum. Issues in the foundation practice curriculum may hinder this development. The common factors model holds promise as an organizing framework for foundation social work practice education. This model may help to resolve some key issues in social work and social work education, and may provide a useful, coherent, and empirical base for the foundation practice curriculum.

Do Social Workers Integrate Sociocultural Issues in Mental Health Session Dialogue?: An Exploratory Study of Cross-Cultural Practice

ABSTRACT Empirical research has not adequately examined whether social workers and clients discuss sociocultural issues when addressing mental health problems, nor the quality of the interaction when such discussion occurs. This exploratory mixed-method study examined the interactional process associated with discussion of sociocultural issues in the first three counseling sessions with four white social worker/client of color dyads. Findings showed that productive cross-cultural interactions were associated neither with specific sociocultural content nor client-worker composition, but rather with the social workers perception and skill. Analysis differentiated one worker/client dialogue from the others, highlighting the importance of training practitioners to apply social work knowledge and skills in a synthesized manner.

Cacophony, polyphony or fugue: Exploring sociocultural concepts with social work students

Abstract This paper documents some dialogue among the authors that emerged as each taught Master of Social Work students a course in sociocultural concepts. The instructors taught this required course from a common syllabus and the discussion reflects the authors’ experiences in the delivery of the course material. At the time these dialogues took place, the instructors had recently changed the course format. Rather than teaching sociocultural concepts in isolation (eg. a class on sexism, a class on ageism, etc.), the instructors crafted the course content around central themes. Postmodern theories underscore much of the course content, and are synthesized both in this course and across the curriculum with feminist, psychodynamic, and cross‐cultural practice theories. The paper begins by summarizing key post‐modern theories that frame the course. Then, the authors respond to formulated questions that address multiple forms of identity development, ambiguity, and competing student ideologies that are manifest in classroom dynamics. Finally, the authors discuss their respective pedagogical and theoretical views and discuss their classroom experiences.

Realizing the potential for leadership in social work

Summary Ongoing racism, structural inequity, dehumanizing institutional bureaucracies, unresponsive service delivery systems, and gaps in services for emerging needs are just some of the pervasive challenges in need of social work leadership. The multidisciplinary nature of social work practice also requires value-based leadership processes on multiple ecological levels to address the challenges inherent within social delivery systems. Social work encourages all social workers to lead these change efforts, but research on front-line social work leadership is lacking. Constructionist conceptualizations of leadership as social influence processes provide a unit of analysis to examine front-line leadership. A secondary analysis of qualitative data examining social work practice that promotes well-being and social justice revealed leadership processes in multiple social work practice settings. Findings Front-line social workers demonstrate three overarching leadership processes in their practice: challenging injustice and changing mindsets, conduit for change, and organizing resources and relationships. Applications Conceptualizing leadership as social influence processes identifies and acknowledges the leadership of front-line social workers, expanding the profession’s capacity to collectively articulate and initiate change with a range of social problems and systemic challenges in organizations and communities.

Applying Research to Enhance Capacity: A Unifying Purpose for an Integrated Profession.

ABSTRACT For more than a century the social work profession has had a dual purpose: to promote individual well-being and social justice, but the micro–macro divide is fragmenting the profession. This article suggests that the profession’s aim might best be realized by adopting a unifying purpose, a just sense of well-being. Research on complex adaptive systems conceptualizes a unifying purpose as vertical integration carried out in differentiated ways in discrete moments of practice in various settings. Interpersonal neurobiology and Aristotle’s interdependence of character virtues and practical judgment inform a corresponding shift from the dualities of personal and professional to the social worker as a person with differentiated professional capacities and activities. Integration with differentiation enhances capacity to promote the profession’s purpose.